While we have all been busy at our offices today, Trump has been busy at his, slipping the following through:
– Signed 5 Executive Orders to advance the controversial Keystone XL and the Dakota Access Pipeline, the latter of which threatens to pollute water sources of Native American reservations in North Dakota and which was rerouted from its original course by more affluent communities after they objected.
– Blamed his losing the popular vote on one of his favorite scapegoats, undocumented immigrants, making the insane claim that 3 to 5 million of them voted illegally. In doing so, the US President is essentially announcing to Americans and the world that the system at the heart of our democratic process, the one that brought him to power, is a farce.
– Clamped down on the Environmental Protection Agency, ordering that there be no more hires, new contracts, or ANY media contact. This follows his previous moratorium on the National Park District twitter account after they re-tweeted side by side photos of crowd sizes at the national mall from the 2009 and 2017 inaugurations.
– Signed a proclamation to officially declare his inauguration day a “National day of patriotic devotion.”
– Moreover, the White House comments line has been shut down mid transition and not reopened. Citizens are told to give their feedback to the White House on (non-existent) Facebook messenger accounts. (The civil rights issues page on the White House website has also been taken down as his staff took over).
And this is just the beginning. Tomorrow or sometime this week, he is expected to sign some highly troubling executive orders on immigration.
So that’s just today and that’s just some of the gems coming out of his administration (don’t want to write 5 pages here): scapegoating undocumented immigrants without a shred of evidence, libeling the voting system in a huge way, the suppression and blackout on the environmental protection agency while pushing for a project that threatens the environment, and the “patriotic devotion” language all reek of Orwellian intentions, indeed the “patriotic devotion” thing goes beyond Orwell and into Kim Jung Il territory.
Sorry to for the gloomy post, but at the very very least, you need to #StayInformedMyFriends.
